The Problem with Calling Religious Belief a Mental Illness

I’m sure many of you have heard the claim that religion is a mental illness. I despise this claim. It is insulting to those of us who actually suffer from mental illnesses and it is insulting to those who are religious, regardless of whether or not they suffer from mental illness. In fact, I’d say it’s doubly insulting to those theists who actually do suffer from a mental illness.

So what is a mental illness? According to http://www.cmha.ca/mental_health/mental-illness/#.VXTVjEaJJc8, “Mental illnesses are health problems that affect the way we think about ourselves, relate to others, and interact with the world around us. They affect our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Mental illnesses can disrupt a person’s life or create challenges, but with the right supports, a person can get back on a path to recovery and wellness.” Obviously this is a very broad definition that can be applied to many different things, but mental illness is marked by how it affects a persons ability to cope with daily life. Mental illnesses make everyday life more difficult. It can make it difficult for a person to get or keep a job, it can make simple tasks like grocery shopping infinitely more challenging, and it can even make getting out of bed or leaving the house impossible. Different mental illness effect people differently, and each person reacts differently to their mental illness. Some people suffer more than others. But we are all affected in one way or another and we all struggle with some element of daily life that others don’t struggle with.

Religion does not have this affect on people. A person who is religious may choose to avoid leaving the house so that they don’t have to associate with those who don’t share their religious views, but they don’t find it physically impossible to leave the house. They don’t feel the fear and anxiety when trying to leave the house. They don’t suffer from the panic attacks or the compulsions. Leaving the house for a religious person who tries to avoid mainstream society isn’t any more difficult for the religious person than it is for the mentally healthy person. And even the so-called delusions and hallucinations said to be suffered by the mentally healthy religious person aren’t like the delusions and hallucinations suffered by those who have delusions and hallucinations as part of their mental illness.

Here’s the thing, all people suffer from delusions and hallucinations at one time or another. Whether it’s seeing a person in the shadows or hearing a wild animal in the rustling bushes, we all see and hear things that aren’t there. In fact, it’s an evolutionary advantage to do so. It’s better to hear a predatory animal when there isn’t one and run from nothing than it is to not hear a predatory animal when there is one and get eaten. It’s better to over react than under react. As such, humans see people hen no people are there and hear danger when there isn’t any. All people do this unless they suffer from some disorder that prevents them from doing so. As such, hearing and seeing things that aren’t there doesn’t make one mentally ill. And being mentally ill doesn’t make one delusional. Not all mentally ill people suffer from delusions or hallucinations.

Do religious people hold beliefs that aren’t real? Of course. I have yet to meet a person who doesn’t believe, and even cling to, some falsehood. I would like to think that I’m smart enough to only believe true things. I would like to think that I’ve perfected my rationality to the point where I can only believe what is true, but I haven’t. And, like it or not, neither have you. None of us are capable of such a thing. Our brains just aren’t capable of it. So yes, religious people believe things that aren’t true, and yes, I believe that a number of their false beliefs relate to religion. But that doesn’t mean that religion is a mental illness. It means that they are fallible humans like everybody else who have fallen for one, what I believe to be, lie that I haven’t. But what about the people who say they talk to God? Aren’t they delusional? Well no. Have you ever taken the time to listen to how they talk about their conversations with God? It’s not like the way a schizophrenic talks about their delusions, or the way any other mentally ill person talks about their own delusion. To demonstrate this, I will use music as an example. We’ve all heard those annoying songs that play over and over again in our heads. Those songs that we know aren’t taking place in the real world. They don’t sound real. They don’t sound solid. Often only one part of the song will play, and we will only hear the words we know. Sometimes we’ll even hear it in our own voice, or it’ll be more like a hum than an actual song. But we know that nobody else is hearing the song. This is often how religious people will talk about their conversations with God. They will say that is was one sided and only they spoke, but they knew that God gave them an answer, or they will say that they heard God’s reply in their own voice. And if they do hear Gods voice in a voice that isn’t their own, they still talk about knowing that it was only in their head and only they could hear it. Very few people say they saw God as if God were actually in the real world, or that they heard God speak externally in a way that others could hear. Were they delusional, the voice of God should feel solid, physical to them. It should seem like others are crazy for not hearing it. It should seem external from themselves. For example, I have a friend who hears music as part of her mental illness. The music is in her head, but she doesn’t hear the music the way we do when we have a song stuck in her head. The song seems to be coming from the external world around her. She has even asked her brother to turn the music off when she heard it. It is only when she’s told that there is no music playing that she realises that it is happening in her head. That is how a delusion manifests itself. Delusions don’t just seem real to the person who experiences them, they feel physical and external. Religious people may eel their conversations with God are real, but they rarely talk about them as though they are physical and external. When they do talk about them as physical and external even other religious people tend to think they are delusional.

But my problem with calling a religious person mentally ill isn’t just because it is inaccurate. Calling religious belief a mental illness automatically devalues my involvement within the atheist community because I am mentally ill. It assumes that mental illness is an insult. It uses mental illness as an excuse to dismiss the person without dealing with them. By using mental illness in this way, you are dismissing me despite the fact that I’m not religious. Despite the fact that I’m “on your team.” But mental illness isn’t an insult. I’m not less human, or less valuable, because I’m mentally ill. I’m not wrong more often or more likely to believe falsehoods than you are because I’m mentally ill. I just struggle with day to day tasks that you don’t struggle with. I just need to be more aware of my mental state than you do. I just need to take medication that you don’t have to take, and only for a short amount of time. My mental illness isn’t a reason to dismiss me, and mental illness wouldn’t be a way to dismiss religion either. Even if religion were a mental illness, you would still need to deal with it in the same way. You would still need to engage the religious. The conversations wouldn’t be any different. And the medication wouldn’t make it go away. Mental illnesses are dealt with, they aren’t cured. I will always have an anxiety disorder. No amount of medication is going to make it go away. Religion would be the same were it actually a mental disorder. It could be dealt with, but no amount of medication would make it go away.

So stop trying to dismiss the religious by calling them mentally ill. Stop trying to use mental illness as a way to discredit the religious. And stop acting as if it’s not an insult to me to call religion a mental illness. The argument doesn’t work. It is not accurate and it does not mean that you can avoid the conversations or cure the religious. It’s just insulting and dismissive.

I have NEVER heard anyone call a religious person MENTALLY ILL. I’ve lived in nine states for 60 years. I’m a God loving Baptist, but the majority of my friends are not terribly religious. If there’s one type of person I can not tolerate is a person that MAKES THINGS UP. You should pursue politics as a career.

And what I won’t stand is people coming on o my blog to call us liars for no other reason then ‘Well I’ve never experienced that so you just have to be making it up.’ Or at least that’s what you seem to be saying.

The fact is that for a few years it was fairly common for a several groups of atheists and other non-religious people to conflation religious belief with mental illness. We thought, and continue to think that that is extremely wrong headed and harmful to think or say.

What is also harmful and wrongheaded, not to mention rude, is jump to conclusions and insult people for no good reason. Now if I’ve misread what you’ve said feel free to reply, but if you honestly just dropped by to leave this thoughtless comment I’d ask you let this be both your first and last.

One doesn’t have to be schizophrenic to suffer delusions. Please forgive me and the atheist community for despising a particular delusions that has caused crusades, suicide bombings, and the occupation of Palestine. To name a few. I know few atheists who would say that religiosity is actually a mental illness. If any do they represent a vocal minority.

Well that is a statement loaded with assumptions. I suggest you be careful and not be the kettle who called the pot black, or make unfair generalizations about diverse groups of people.

Now are some atheists hypocrites, sure like any group with have our fair share of hypocrites. That said I don’t recall hessian or I ever saying atheists where the most tolerant people, in fact I think we’ve talk a fair amount about the failing of many atheists.

You have a way with words. You know how to capture an audience, I wish I was able to do. I love the points you put into this particular post. A point that I want to share is that some people with mental illness do have religious delusions and hallucinations. I know that’s not what you were conveying in your post. I appreciate that you clarify that religion is not a mental illness.

I agree with your sentiment here as I do think mentally ill is the wrong thing to say, but perhaps for more reasons than you mentioned.

I think it’s important for society to take mental health more seriously in general and part of that is recognizing that there is no difference between mentally ill and physically ill, because everything that we are talking about is a human organ. Mental illness is a physical problem, manifesting itself in terms of behavior. The next thing to recognize is that the brain like any other organ can become damaged through physical injury, can be genetically defective, and then you have to take into account nurture. Just like the liver can be damaged through excessive alcohol intake, the brain can be damaged through repeated exposure to negative ideas and behavior. For instance a child of a paranoid schizophrenic parent that was untreated ends up displaying many similar symptoms though the child may not have that condition at all. So in that sense, though the person may not have paranoid schizophrenia in the genetic sense, they may display similar behavior that is just as real as someone who actually has the condition.

Now repeated conditioning to religious ideas and beliefs has a physical impact on the brain wherein neural pathways are forged. As those pathways get reinforced by those beliefs, they release more and more dopamine in the brain which makes them feel good. Thus people with strong beliefs are rewarded in the brain by reinforcing those beliefs, and actually trying to absorb contradictory ideas actually makes them feel unwell. Such that the better your arguments are against such a person the more they will resist to avoid the feelings of trauma they would experience should they simply accept contradictory arguments to what they have spent many years believing. Now if those religious ideas cause them to discriminate against homosexuals, oppress women, spread fear of fire and brimstone in children, etc, then I think we have a problem and something that could resemble an illness or disorder. Mental illness is not something that always causes problems for the person themselves, but can cause harm to those around them. The line between having strong beliefs and mental illness is a grey one. I recommend reading The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer if you are interested in learning more about how beliefs change the brain physically.

The brain IS of course enormously complex and has many different functions. The term mental illness is so broad that, at least to me, it’s unclear what exactly qualifies because depending on where and how the brain is impacted a multitude of symptoms may be seen. The problem is that society views us as having the ability to simply change our beliefs and behavior at will, but this is simply not possible. A psychopath may be raised by a loving family and not be violent even though he would lack empathy. But a psychopath who has been abused or had a traumatic childhood event will most likely become violent and has no real choice over the matter.

A person with a cold can be said to be physically ill, just like a person with cancer could be said to be physically ill. Should the cancer patient be offended. There are simply different types of illnesses and in reality they are physical and need to be seen as such.

Religion is a mental illness is a lazy man’s approach to faith. It allows them to ignore interacting and understanding those who are religious. The same could be said of the religion is a virus approach.

A few years back an atheist chided me for saying studying theology was important. “No need, he said. Religious people are crazy.” By attributing their beliefs and practices to mental illness he was able to dismiss billions of people.

I would disagree. I don’t find the term “mentally ill” to be an insult, just the way I don’t find the term “diabetic” to be an insult. My husband is quite bipolar. He takes his meds just like a diabetic takes insulin. The meds work and I am so happy they do. They keep my husband alive.

However, I think, especially with the current example of the Duggar family, belief in religion can be a mental illness, created by adults in children. They seem to be quite sure that their god talks to them as are a lot of Christians, and other theists, that I have personally experienced.

A lot of times calling someone crazy has a certain attitude behind it that makes it an insult. I will call myself crazy or talk about people who are crazy, and I don’t find anything wrong with it. I’m not pissed with who they are. But I have known and seen others who think “crazy people” should be isolated from everyone else (like shipped off to an island somewhere.) That kind of talk hurts because I know unless I convince them otherwise I am essentially a disease.

Learning strange things from elders can definitely mess someone up. But I think mental illness thing runs a bit deeper than beliefs or what one was brought up to think. It’s kind of like a piece of who a person is, not what they are told to do.

Can I throw a spanner into the works? Have you ever noticed how many religious techniques are modelled on mental illness? For example, monotheism has strong narcissistic tendencies. A number of religions use OCD practices to indoctrinate. Guilt and even paranoia are common tools. It’s like they studied human vulnerability…

I don’t think you’re throwing a spanner into the works at all, I think you approaching a better argument. One about religion and abusive behavior build in to many religious traditions and organizations. Though none of that is the same thing as mental illness.

Whoever says that religious belief is a mental illness is not very well educated on the subject. Being religious is not indicative of a mental disorder. However, hyperreligiosity is a major feature of several common mental disorders. In address just one of those disorders.

““Hyperreligiosity is a major feature of mania, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, temporal-lobe epilepsy and related disorders, in which the ventromedial dopaminergic systems are highly activated and exaggerated attentional or goal-directed behavior toward extrapersonal space occurs.” Source: The Role of the Extrapersonal Brain Systems in Religious Activity – PubMed 16439158

In his book, “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain” Dr. David Eagleman writes:

““If an epileptic seizure is focused in a particular sweet spot in the temporal lobe, a person won´t have motor seizures, but instead something more subtle. The effect is something like a cognitive seizure, marked by changes of personality, hyperreligiosity (an obsession with religion and feelings of religious certainity), hypergraphia (extensive writing on a subject, usually about religion), the false sense of an external presence, and, often, the hearing voices that are attributed to a god. Some fraction of history´s prophets, martyrs, and leaders appear to have had temporal lobe epilepsy.”

In the Journal of the Association of Medicine and Psychiatry, it states: “Because of these affective, behavioral, and cognitive symptoms, patients with Complex Partial Seizures (a.k.a. Temporal Lobe Epilepsy) are frequently misdiagnosed.”

My late husband would be alive today had his mental disorder, as noted above, with hyperreligiosity as a major feature of his symptoms, been recognized as a mental disorder. Instead, it was misinterpreted by all those who were religious as being normal behavior in a religious culture.

I agree with you — mental illness isn’t an insult. The brain is an organ, just like the heart, liver, and kidneys. Thank you for bringing awareness to help diminish the stigma associated with disorders of the brain. Too bad Jesus didn’t know about this when he purportedly cast out demons from people with seizure disorders. The stigma was exacerbated by Christianity throughout history.

Reblogged this on Out From Under the Umbrella and commented:
I’ve seen some atheists throw this out there as the reason people are religious/Christians. I cringe each time I see it. If people who are religious are so because they are mentally ill that is like saying that I was mentally ill and have been cured because I am no longer religious. I don’t think that I was mentally ill. I think I believed a falsehood. That doesn’t make a person mentally ill. It belittles those who are actually mentally ill. It’s like saying finding one’s way out of religion is a cure for mental illness. Which is just as utterly stupid as saying that finding Jesus is the cure for it.

I’ve seen some atheists throw this out there as the reason people are religious/Christians. I cringe each time I see it. If people who are religious are so because they are mentally ill that is like saying that I was mentally ill and have been cured because I am no longer religious. I don’t think that I was mentally ill. I think I believed a falsehood. That doesn’t make a person mentally ill. It belittles those who are actually mentally ill. It’s like saying finding one’s way out of religion is a cure for mental illness. Which is just as utterly stupid as saying that finding Jesus is the cure for it.

Excellent piece. The stigma of mental illness is one of the most insidiously damaging that we have in our society and really needs to go. However, it’s so ingrained that most of us don’t even notice it. As someone who has been diagnosed with a ‘physical’ illness that has long been dismissed as a ‘mental’ illness, I am well aware of the power of this stigma. Indeed, the degree to which the ME/CFS patient community wishes to underline the physical nature of their illness in order to escape that stigma can be frightening to behold. I think, in doing so, we often don’t realise what we are saying about mental illness and those who suffer from it. If drugs help those with mental illness – and they frequently do – then it suggests that the dividing line between mental illness and physical illness is hazy to say the least.

In the same way, I find it interesting to note the reaction by the gay community to the suggestion that they have an impairment or disability. It’s usually pretty fiercely against. But what does that say about our ingrained attitude to impairment and disability?

Ultimately, I think what lies at the root of all such stigma is a fear of our own vulnerability. There is, in all of us, a desire to subscribe to the ‘perfect’ norm in order to be accepted as having worth. The ‘broken’ (whatever the way in which they are perceived to be broken) are to be shunned because, if they are not, they threaten our own sense of self and the sense of ‘rightness’ and hence power that comes from that. You see it in issues of gender, sexuality, health, disability and sickness, class, wealth, race, intelligence, race, religion… even down to people with red hair and freckles!! It seems to be basic to us as human beings. Fortunately, this leaves us a lot of areas in which to become vulnerable ourselves and hence (if we are willing) to learn some compassion for others who are ‘broken’.

“Religious people may eel their conversations with God are real, but they rarely talk about them as though they are physical and external.”
I think this is only half right. Yes the types of people you are talking about know that their “conversations with God” didn’t happen physically…but they do talk about them as external. They assume it really was communication with an external entity; the fact that they know there was no physical voice of God involved only means they believe in telepathy.

I did a post similar to this one a while back, and the responses I got were varied. It saddens me that some atheists wish to claim religion is a mental illness for no other reason than to utilize the stigma associated with mental illness. They don’t realize, as you correctly pointed out, that they are punishing people for having a mental illness.

What I find interesting is that people used to say awful things about those who suffered from physical ailments. Catching a disease was because of some deity’s punishment. I think perhaps the stigma associated with mental illness is similar in origin; we don’t know enough about it to dispel the awful connotations associated with it.

I am happy that you did this post. Religion isn’t a mental illness, and secular thinkers do not have an excuse to rely on stigma to make a point.

Beautifully done, and thank you. I’d like to add another couple of points.

When I think of “mental illness” (a wastebasket term bordering on the meaningless when not referencing a particular diagnosis and its rationale), I think of something entirely neurochemical in nature, hence the “illness” aspect. When I think of “mental illness” as used as a pejorative for believers, as though there’s a distinction between religious “delusion” and secular “delusion,” I think of something almost entirely cultural in nature, with perhaps an element of nature applied in the nature/nurture framework. One is properly the realm of medicine, scientific method, and applied hard sciences. The other is properly the realm of sociology, anthropology, and a lot of other handwaving that tries to pass for social science, often of the shoddiest nature, and utterly lacking in genuine scientific methodology, subjective in design and interpretation, and arguable to the point of mooting any notion of replication.

The other point is in relation to epistemology and the concept of Justified True Belief. Rationalists appear to me to have set the bar higher to attain such a degree of belief. The remainder appear to fall more along a spectrum…just what quality of evidence is required to qualify a Justified True Belief? Strange as it may sound, I’ll take the “delusions” of a religious believer who really believes they’ve felt a god’s presence or heard the voice of their god or experienced some sign or wonder over the delusions we encounter from other religionists that just boil down to the sloppiest of irrational thinking, especially when they become adamant that the same types of thinking should thus equally apply across the spectrum of belief and not just to their own cozy little niche. That latter kind of believer seems to me to have such a low threshold for quality of evidence as to perhaps make them far more an existential threat exactly because their kind of irrationality is so much more readily communicable, relying as it does solely on poor mastery of language and reason. At least the “delusional” types *know* what they’ve heard/felt/seen/experienced and know it’s entirely personal to them, only to be communicated to others if/when their deity sees fit to communicate it directly themselves. Far less contagious, and far less of an existential threat, I think.

This is a real good piece. Frankly, I agree with the essence of your piece. Religion possibly could be considered superstitious or ritualistic. It could be construed as something that is compulsive based on fear. Control can be exerted using fear and shame.

I truly beleive that we live in a crazy world. That craziness is a natural reaction to crazy environment. Why would this government allow Pharm to advertise to the public. With the exception of New Zealand, we are the only country that allows that. We are so far into immediate gratification, tht i think we all addicted to something.

APA sees fit to yet again adapt the DSM. Now the fifth edition to literally allow a diagnosis to just about any kind of presentation. We are all walking labels. What a joke?

Yea, there is mental illness. But, the story is the point. Allow the person to share without shame and being labeled. Use talk rather than drugs. No where else in the world do they rely on drugs more than this country. Everything is about money, control. I truly beleive the mentally ill are the most oppressed in this country.

I live in Canada. The only time I see drugs advertised on TV is when I’m watching American television. But I can’t use just talk therapy. I’ve tried it. Things just got worse. Right now I need the drugs. I’m lucky: since I have an anxiety disorder I only need to take drugs for a year. Some people need to take drugs for the rest of their lives. A schizophrenic can’t stop taking their medication. If they do they risk hurting themselves or others, ad they generally end up homeless because they can’t function. It doesn’t help that both Canada and the US eliminated most of the programs they had available to the mentally ill in the 80s and 90s thanks in large part to the stigma against mental illness. Now there’s very little available to help those of us who suffer, and what is available has ridiculously high wait times or ridiculously high costs. It took me months to get to see someone so that I could get my drugs, and by that time I had to deal with anxiety that was making me unable to function in daily life.
Rather than continuing the stigmatization and making assumptions when you don’t know what’s going on in a person’s life, you would do well to listen to what the person has to say about their own issues. The DSM may not be perfect, but nobody is trying to label everything or turn everything into a mental illness. The DSM is constantly upgraded because we keep learning more and more about the issues that people suffer from and how to help them. For me, the DSM has been nothing but helpful.

The cure for what, exactly? If one factors in history, well, er, umm, what can one say but that Christianity is certainly no cure, it’s in MOST cases a great social disease. Now, if “Christians” had remained “Jesusians” and not gone to worshipping some pseudo-Grecian deity, the Christ or Word, then had they survived the certain persecutions, they would have made this world a better place. Unfortunately, the Matrix inserted its Manchurian Candidate, Paul of Tarsus, into the pot to destroy all vestiges of Jesus teachings and replace them with a new type of religious/political movement that morphed into a world power needed to take over from a disintegrating Roman empire and to undergird the coming European empires that would conquer the world in the name of the Greco-deity: the Christ. Christianity is more of a global political organization than a religion, although being counted as religion and having the trappings allows for a shit-load of tax breaks and special treatment, especially in countries that don’t take religion seriously enough to demote it to no recognition, or to elevate it to a theocracy. Christians aren’t mentally insane at all, they are just typical Earthian opportunists who’ve had a much longer time of figuring out the angles than their atheistic opponents.

Manchurian Candidate? The analogy is centuries after Paul existed. If you don’t want to be Christian, then don’t. I don’t go out there and attack Atheists, but some seem only to happy to attack Christianity. What do you fear about Christians?

Me? Currently. Not a damn thing. Religious people have their heads screwed on backwards.
But maybe your question ought to be directed at those that have been subject to the insanity religion breeds.
Ask the Northern Irish for example? Pike a side
Or Rwandans perhaps?
How about every child that was ever told they were going to hell for being naughty or not believing in Jesus?
You could ask the Cathars …. but you can't.
In fact ask ANY Christian from any sect about their feelings of other Christians, Catholics ( who are not considered christian by a great many christians) Muslims, Jews, Hindus etc.
Do you see?
Just a thought.

Mentally ill, no, but insanity manifests in the strangest of places, does it not?

Though I hope you don’t think that there are no Christan attacking atheists unprovoked. I’ve personalty watched priests and pastors make scape goats and caricature of atheists to make a point, or just to bad month us evil heathens because we can’t have morals or something.

Further a lot of atheists are hostile to Christians because christian are hostile to them. Sure some atheists are just assholes, but the same can be said for any group of people sufficiently large.

The CMHA is another overstuffed money sucking charity, wasting money to create new disorders. In my opinion this is a waste of a blog. Big Pharma, and the medical charities use stupidity like this to brainwash the public into believing that they need treatment. Sorry. But you hit a nerve here.

Yes and no, on big pharma (I used to work in a big pharmaceutical company). There’s a lot of nonsense spouted about “big pharma,” but it is true that there is a group of huge, wealthy, powerful pharmaceutical companies (and related lobby groups) which wield influence primarily to make profit rather than to be an effective part of the health industry, and which have a long history of acting unethically. Recognising that is a good thing!